Sunday, December 18, 2011

As we have mentioned before, the main source control system we use at Wayfair is SVN, with TortoiseSVN as our client. One of the things we love about SVN is the ability to add commit hooks, or checks that run when someone tries to commit a file to source control. By having a few key checks we can prevent bugs, ensure consistent coding practices, and generally have a cleaner codebase.

The first commit hook we added was a PHP lint check. This means that when you try to commit a PHP file we run php -l on it from the command line, ensuring that the file has no syntax errors:

Rejected commit due to a syntax error in a PHP file

This might seem like a paranoid check, and you might assume that this kind of thing never happens, but with our ASP code (where we have no syntax check) we saw people committing files with invalid syntax on a semi-regular basis. Sometimes people are making the same change in a number of files and fail to test each one, or sometimes mistakes are made when people are rushing. This commit hook is a quick and easy way to prevent a silly (but extremely dangerous) problem.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Read it Later is an online tool and app that allows you to save the "one read wonders" that you find on the web for another time. I use this service frequently, since I'm often checking up on Twitter or Google+ on my phone and seeing posts that I want to read, but that I don't have time to read at that time. It's easy to add a URL to Read it Later and pull it up on my desktop at home. Overall it's a great service, and free.

When I started using Read it Later it had a really simple web interface, with no frills or fancy animations. This made for a fast, but not particularly sophisticated product.

Read it Later is currently trying out a new and improved web interface that gives larger previews of your articles (including thumbnails), easier navigation and action menus, better use of the available screen real estate, nice animations when you mark things as read, and generally a cleaner and more modern look (among other improvements).